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Jehovah's Witnesses in "Generation of 1914" doctrinal Crisis: Will the JW transform from Cult to Church in the post-2014 era? June 29, 2011 By john thomas Didymus

Dawson writes with reference to the failure of 1975 date previously set for Armageddon by the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses:

Singelenberg’s detailed analysis of the nature and consequences of the 1975 prophetic disconfirmation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses presents an interesting test case of the role of leadership, one that falls between the extremes examined so far. The leaders of the church responded quite strongly, though not too quickly, to the failure of 1975. They chose, however, more or less to repudiate the prophecy, even though they had promoted it. They hid behind the vagueness of the prophecy’s terms of reference, terms that may well have been kept vague as a safe guard against the possibility of failure. This definite yet compromised response prevented a full scale disaster, but it cost the church many members in
the short run.

The Governing body of the Jehovah's Witnesses has for decades taught that the beginning of World War I, in 1914, marked the commencement of Jesus' invisible Parousia in heaven, and that the generation of 1914 which saw the commencement of Jesus' Invisible presence (will not "pass away" (Matthew 24:34) before the occurrence of a catastrophic Armageddon which will destroy all "enemies of Jehovah" (read: all none Jehovah's Witnesses). With repeated attempts at setting the length of a generation having failed, the governing body of the Jehovah's Witnesses (which calls itself the "faithful and discrete slave class"–remnant of the 144,000 described in Revelations 7:2-4) introduced, in 1995, a new doctrine of the length of a generation now termed the "two overlapping generations doctrine."
Recent comments by former Witnesses, on Jehovahs-Witnesses.net , on this new doctrinal innovation by the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses, suggests that the group may well have commenced a post-2014 era of transformation from "cult" to mainstream leaning organization in which expectation of doomsday is postponed sufficiently to allow time for the original "generation of 1914" cult belief gradually and quietly dropped and finally openly repudiated.
The governing body of the Jehovah' Witnesses explains its new "overlapping generations" teaching in a study edition of the Watchtower Magazine, April 15th, 2010 (pg. 27-29), as follows:
Although we cannot measure the exact length of “this generation,” we do well to keep in mind several things about the word “generation”: It usually refers to people of varying ages whose lives overlap during a particular time period; it is not excessively long; and it has an end. (Ex. 1:6) How, then, are we to understand Jesus’ words about “this generation”? He evidently meant that the lives of the anointed who were on hand when the sign began to become evident in 1914 would overlap with the lives of other anointed ones who would see the start of the great tribulation.
Leon Festingers et al after conducting what is now widely acknowledged as a classic study of a UFO cult in 1954. He published the result of their study in "When Prophecy Fails." The study noted the tendency of doomsday cults, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, to adjust to failure of prophecy by rationalizing in a manner which makes it unnecessary to give up the basic assumptions and beliefs underlying their world-view. In terms of the theory of cognitive dissonance, Festinger et al, explained that groups generally adjust their beliefs in conformity with their behavior. Thus, the more committed an individual is, in his behavior, to an outcome ( an imminent Armageddon, for instance) the greater the compulsion to reduce the tension created by circumstances which challenges the validity of the belief by adjusting one's set of beliefs.

Jehovah's Witnesses in House-to-House Preaching
The cognitive dissonance theory explains the resilience of groups termed "cults" in the face of a consistent pattern of failed prophecies. Consonance seeking behavior by rationalization would appear most pronounced in doomsday or millenarian cults, and the Jehovah's Witnesses have long been recognized by scholars and experts in the field as the best example in western culture of groups seeking reestablishment of consonance by spiritualizing rationalization of failure of prophecy. The rationalization process is intimately involved in the adaptive changes by which doomsday millenarian "cults" survive, thrive and even transform fringe "cult" identify to mainstream "church" identity in the era of their life histories following failure of cult establishing end-time prophecy.
The best example of a process of spiritualizing rationalization in transition from cult to church in recent American history is provided by the Millerites who, after a series of disappointments culminating in the "great disappointment" of 1844 (with regard to their highly publicized date-setting predictions of the second-coming), managed to adjust their belief systems by spiritualizing the "great disappointment" in their "Investigative Judgment" doctrine, and have survived today in the form of the mainstream Church, The Seventh Day Adventists.
According to Dawson in his, When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists: A Theoretical Overview, rationalization of failure may sometimes also involve attribution of failure of prophecy to human error, an approach which appears to be the main strategy of the Jehovah's Witnesses governing body in the recent cognitive consonance seeking doctrinal reviews(spiritualizing rationalization having been the basis of establishment of 1914 as date of "invisible coming" or parousia of Christ, following the failure of Armageddon date setting at 1914).
Dawson writes with reference to the failure of 1975 date previously set for Armageddon by the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses:
Singelenberg’s detailed analysis of the nature and consequences of the 1975 prophetic disconfirmation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses presents an interesting test case of the role of leadership, one that falls between the extremes examined so far. The leaders of the church responded quite strongly, though not too quickly, to the failure of 1975. They chose, however, more or less to repudiate the prophecy, even though they had promoted it. They hid behind the vagueness of the prophecy’s terms of reference, terms that may well have been kept vague as a safe guard against the possibility of failure. This definite yet compromised response prevented a full scale disaster, but it cost the church many members in
the short run.
In his When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists, Dawson explains that the survival of a cult, when prophecy fails, may depend on the intensity of dissonance felt in the first place and, secondly, on the ability of the leadership in dissonance management. Dawson suggests that for most cults which survive the failure of prophecy, dissonance may not have been as intense for insiders as perceived by outsiders (religious beliefs being unlike scientific beliefs). Those members for whom dissonance was most intense are those who defect while those who stay form the nucleus of a new "settled" organization which may actually expand proselytizing efforts in period following failure of prophecy and gradually acquire a mainstream status.

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Roger Ebert @ebertchicago, the esteemed movie critic of the Chicago Tribune and the famed Siskel and Ebert show, has discovered Twitter in a big way.

A prolific journalist, Ebert has become an even more prolific tweeter who seemingly suffers from insomnia as do I.

It’s not so much insomnia as a life long desire to watch late night movies like the Ninth Gate on television.

“Prophesying the End of Days can make you money, but has a limited shelf life.”was his post around midnight last night.

“People have short memories,” @sdpate replied. “you can repeat the act after a reasonable amount of time. JWs have been doing it since the 1860s.” They have named the date for the End of Days at least 16 times since then.

I’ve watched the religion for 6 decades and marvel at their 7 million adherents who regularly ignore the stupidity of believing one wrong End of Days prediction after another.

For a time, I was one of them. My mother converted to be a Jehovah’s Witness when I was 5, much to the anger of my father who was the typical lapsed Catholic. He wasn’t so much as lapsed as a man working two jobs to support a family and weekend tavern habit with a journalist’s cynicism about religion.

So for the next 25 years I heard nothing but Armageddon warnings, about the war between Jesus and Satan and how only Jehovah’s Witnesses would make it through to paradise on earth.

Fire would dance on the surface of the world in the End of Days consuming the wicked – which meant everyone not out selling Watchtowers on the weekends.

As a child, it was an intriguing concept and held in place by daily bible readings, five hours of meetings at the Kingdom Hall, bible study at the dining room table and sundry other bits of brainwashing. I went along for the ride.

Then around 14 years old, the normal age for boys to seek adventure beyond church, I discovered Beyond the Fringe. You were perhaps expecting me to say girls. I had discovered them long before that.

Beyond the Fringe was a London West End satirical skit with Dudley Moore (10, Arthur), Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett. In many ways they were the forerunners for Monty Python and were successors to The Goon Show, Hancock’s Halfhour and other post-war British comedy.

The Beyond the Fringe LP of their performance was produced by George Martin who would soon produce for The Beatles records. His early days at EMI Parlophone records included odd jobs like producing comedy records which he he apparently enjoyed.

Along with sacred topics like British participation in the World War II, Beyond the Fringe lampooned people who prophesied the end of the world in a skit called “The End of the World.”




I won’t repeat the punch line and spoil the audio clip but suffice it to say, my rebellious teen mind latched onto this and never believed in Armageddon with the same breathless fervor of the devout Jehovah’s Witness. My mother tried in vain to destroy the record. She understood it’s corrosive danger.

Of course, comedy records are a poor substitute for religious belief. Other than the ridiculous image of people sitting on a high mountain waiting for God to end it all, I had no proof He wasn’t coming.

Rock and roll, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and life were much more interesting to this teenager than marching door to door on Saturday telling people to buy the Watchtower and Awake and avoid the end of the world.

And here is how they get people to stay in a religion based on the most ludicrous of propositions while failing over and over to deliver – “love and marriage, love and marriage, go to together with a baby carriage.”

I fell in love or lust with a girl at 19 and got married. She was a Jehovah’s Witness and zip goes the strings of your heart. I was married, bought a house and fathered two wonderful children before long. So for another five years I tried my darnedest to fall into line and believe God was coming with fire next time.

Luckily the Watchtower announced the date He was coming – October 1, 1975. Just like the Beyond the Fringeskit, JW leaders had read the ancient scrolls, manuscripts and papyrus to determine this was THE END OF DAYS.

Even if I didn’t believe, what were the odds? It was like insurance. Hang in there with a really bad premise because it was only 5 years away and you might hit the jackpot.

As time marched on closer and closer to October 1, 1975, people were leaving their jobs, selling homes, moving to far away places to become missionaries and otherwise prove to God they were his kind of people. The excitement started to build around 1973 and JW’s were adding new members at a rapid clip.

Of course, God didn’t end the world on October 1st, 1975. Nothing happened and just like those silly people sitting on the mountain top, JW’s did a collective “Huh? What happened?”
Like the satirical skit, the Watchtower leaders shrugged their shoulders and said they would try again. “Same time tomorrow. We must get a winner one day.”

Restless, I headed into Charlottetown to UPEI Library and later the Confederation Library to research the Jehovah’s Witness religion. One of the secrets the leaders of the JW’s learned was that publishing builds a religion. If you can create another “world view” in print, people will believe it. That’s why they come to your door regularly with The Watchtower and Awake magazines. They print their own bibles and books with their slant to theology.

What I discovered was that the Jehovah’s Witness religion (International Bible Students IBS back then) started back in the 1860s on the same premise – prophesying the End of Days.

During the 1830s and 1840s, Seventh Day Adventists had predicted the end of the world so many times, their faithful lost faith. Charles Taze Russell, the IBS / JW founder, took some of their bible dating techniques and teachings from other religion and started predicting the End of Days on his own.

In a corporate raider move that Donald Trump would admire, he stole The Watchtower magazine from another religious man and started churning out magazines predicting the End of Days.

From then until now, Jehovah’s Witnesses have prophesied the End of the World incorrectly at least 16 times -I’ll put the list from Wikipedia as end note.

Amazingly, I remembered some of them vaguely from things people would tell me. In every instance of getting it wrong, the faithful Jehovah’s Witnesses had swallowed the rationalization given them in the pages of The Watchtower.

So you can make money prophesying the End of Days. The Jehovah’s Witness religion is rich. They own very valuable real estate all over the world, including some of the choicest spots in Brooklyn New York, printing plants and the free labour of 7 million magazine and book sellers around the world.

Dates Jehovah’s Witnesses prophesied as the End of the World

1877: Christ’s kingdom would hold full sway over the earth in 1914; the Jews, as a people, would be restored to God’s favour; the “saints” would be carried to heaven.[52]
1891: 1914 would be “the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men.”[53]
1904: “World-wide anarchy” would follow the end of the Gentile Times in 1914.[54]
1916: World War I would terminate in Armageddon and the rapture of the “saints”.[55]
1917: In 1918, Christendom would go down as a system to oblivion and be succeeded by revolutionary governments. God would “destroy the churches wholesale and the church members by the millions.” Church members would “perish by the sword of war, revolution and anarchy”. The dead would lie unburied. In 1920 all earthly governments would disappear, with worldwide anarchy prevailing.[56]
1920: Messiah’s kingdom would be established in 1925 and bring worldwide peace. God would begin restoring the earth. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other faithful patriarchs would be resurrected to perfect human life and be made princes and rulers, the visible representatives of the New Order on earth. Those who showed themselves obedient to God would never die.[57]
1922: The antitypical “jubilee” that would mark God’s intervention in earthly affairs in 1925 would take place in “probably the fall” of that year.[58] The chronology was described as “correct beyond a doubt”,[44]“absolutely and unqualifiedly correct”,[45] bearing “the stamp of approval of Almighty God”[45] and “too sublime to be the result of chance or of human invention”.[45]
1924: God’s restoration of the Earth would begin “shortly after” October 1, 1925. Jerusalem would be made the world’s capital. Resurrected “princes” such as Abel, Noah, Moses and John the Baptist would give instructions to their subjects around the world by radio, and aeroplanes would transport people to and from Jerusalem from all parts of the globe in just “a few hours”.[59]
1938: In 1938, Armaggedon was too close for marriage or child bearing.[60]
1941: There were only “months” remaining until Armageddon.[61]
1942: Armageddon was “immediately before us.”[62]
1966: It would be 6000 years since man’s creation in the fall of 1975 and it would be “appropriate” for Christ’s thousand-year reign to begin at that time.[63] Time was “running out, no question about that.”[64]The “immediate future” was “certain to be filled with climactic events … within a few years at most”, the final parts of Bible prophecy relating to the “last days” would undergo fulfillment as Christ’s reign began.
1968: No one could say “with certainty” that the battle of Armageddon would begin in 1975, but time was “running out rapidly” with “earthshaking events” soon to take place.[65] In March 1968 there was a “short period of time left”, with “only about ninety months left before 6000 years of man’s existence on earth is completed”.[66]